


Downward Momentum

by Lyssandra_Med



Series: One-Shot [54]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, Freeform, Horror, Plague, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:41:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25221058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyssandra_Med/pseuds/Lyssandra_Med
Summary: A sickness has enveloped the land, and now Hermione is all alone.Well, alone except the woman following her and the ravens that stared with curious eyes.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Bellatrix Black Lestrange
Series: One-Shot [54]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1429282
Comments: 2
Kudos: 80





	Downward Momentum

**Author's Note:**

> Mild-Editing, free-form nonsense.  
> Paragraphs? Never heard of them.

There were bodies piled atop the ramparts, the twisting roads that moved between the outer edges of the Capital and the inner alleyways that snaked between one home to the next. They were bloated into misshapen bags, slackjawed and staring everywhere with eyes that sunk lower and lower with every minute. Flies buzzed all through the air in massive swarms that blanketed the fallen, fat little things with sharpened wings and a bite that burned.

Sometimes they were trapped inside as well, buzzing and crashing against the fetid cage.

Hermione wasn’t sure if it was real or not but at night she could feel them crawling over her body, beneath her clothes and licking at her skin with pungent  _ need _ .

There had been a lot of that lately, the past few months had been full of it.

The wondering at her state of mind, that was.

She had been wondering whether the things she thought or heard -  _ or sometimes felt late at night when it was dark and the alleyway outside of her little hovel was quiet and filled with death instead of life and voices that cajoled with the music of merry men and drunkards  _ \- were real.

Her mind was simply playing tricks on her.

_ Right? _

Or did it even matter if it was real? _ Was she still even alive? _

The Abbey up north was real. It had once been full of parishioners, globs of fresh faces moving all about in religious ecstasy.

Now it was full of blood. Full of the stench of rot and broken memories. Hermione had wandered in once to look for help, for someone who was still healthy and whole.

She hadn’t made that mistake again.

Couldn’t, not once she had seen what they were doing in the name of their heathen God. Hand in hand, wire and spike piercing their flesh so that none could let go. Metal and wood had never once looked so sinister to her eyes and the ravens that had flocked above them were cajoling in their merriment.

The ravens said  _ ‘Look, behold what they have done for us, a meal fit for a King.’ _

Hermione saw and wept that night for what had been lost and all that had been done -  _ in vain, for naught _ \- to prevent it.

When daylight broke above the crescent of the Capital she went about her business as best she could manage. The streets were all far from empty but those that could still move were all nearing the endstage of the infection. Bruises were evident beneath their loose robes, odd lumps were -  _ alternately _ \- bleeding or oozing pus. 

The fetid miasma was almost overpowering to Hermione but she braved it regardless of the irritation. She had survived this long with no sign of infection and with all of her interaction she considered herself as blessed.

And besides all that she still needed to eat, to drink. There was nothing for her to do except brave the grasping hands and pained moans to find something for her stomach.

She needed to live.

Everyone else simply needed to die.

\---

Thin cows all lean from meagre grazing, chickens that wandered lost without their roosters, random livestock that had once been much more prevalent outside of the Capital proper -  _ with its inner rings and walls all clad in bronze, the ivory watchtowers all filled with archers who would have happily cut down all those who threatened the populace  _ \- before the Fall were now  _ here. _ Here because they were lost, because their masters had died, because the hope of a cure deep within its cultured walls was a fever dream of the hopeless.

The farmers and merchants and toilers had only been searching for a way to save their family, their children, themselves. They were willing to give away anything in the name of hope.

But there was no cure, and Hermione knew that now.

Most of the doors that she -  _ knocked on, before politely and loudly announcing her presence _ \- entered were filled with anything of value and yet still she looked. The famine that had been rolling throughout the countryside the year before had been a living Hell to those nestled deep within the Capital once it became clear that the farmers and the workers who lived in the anchoring villages were hoarding what they had left.

Why would they ever think to sell perishables for gold, for something that was useless to eat?

Why would they ever desire to support some aristocratic stain when their own families were looking at eating scraps?

But then the Sickness had blown in and quickly enough they left their homes and took what they had with them. There was some relief for Hermione, some stores of food and some hastily scribbled notes to hiding places filled with grain and stable butter.

There was also the livestock now openly wandering on leashes that were not held. They knew to look for water, for shelter, for something to drink and somewhere to sleep. They avoided the hardest afflicted areas and seemed peaceful with the sudden lack of noise.

And Hermione had always been good with a bow.

\---

_ Things _ proceeded -  _ as normally as the abnormal could _ \- peacefully for seven weeks.

But the eighth brought change.

Hermione’s routine had become simple and predictable.

Move along, wander through twists and bends, collect all that she could. 

No longer.

The bow -  _ her only real protection as she had never been good with swords or daggers, her only real means of keeping safe from those ne'er-do-wells who remained and might wish to do her harm, the last reminder of a family who had  _ **_loved_ ** _ her with all their heart and were simple worm meal now -  _ was gone. Lifted and removed, or forgotten and lost. 

Hermione moved to using stealth and discretion instead.

She could avoid those who were still -  _ bleakly and just barely _ \- living and avoid catching whatever had lain the population low.

Or she hoped she could. It was surely easier said than done in a city where the architecture was piled on top of itself and every corner owned by someone or another. Homes were stacked atop homes, stores were built into the ground and opened only at the front, alleyways would twist themselves in loops and tunnels that emerged where they had begun or sometimes didn’t seem to emerge at all.

She worked to avoid those last spots, the ones with wind -  _ and moans _ \- pushing back against her face. Marked them within her mind as the last places she would ever visit, voluntarily or not.

But this particular morning in the eighth week brought with it change that felt greater than the loss of her bow.

A brilliant sun beat down on her with sallow light while the wind from the North was filled with a chill. It rained that morning -  _ grey water that fell from a cloudless sky _ \- and what ashes there were made the roads and trails into blackened muck.

Hermione found herself a proper cloak nearly an hour into -  _ ransacking, looting, pillaging the remnants of a vast society that had so much expendable income that  _ **_still_ ** _ she found piles of useless coins and glittering jewels _ \- searching the hovels along the eastern edge of the first Capital wall. People had come here -  _ for so many centuries and then no longer _ \- to give praise, heap worship, grovel at the feet of the Emperor and His Godly Progeny.

They were pilgrims, mostly. Foreigners or converts. Vast trains of people that had come from all over to pledge their fealty to a dying God in the hopes it would sustain Him -  _ and that He would sustain them _ \- for just a little bit longer.

Hermione would never tell a soul but she had come across His bloated corpse not three weeks earlier in an alleyway that was more a moat of blood. She didn’t know exactly who had been responsible for the massacre but the pitchforks and farming implements that lay scattered on the ground and were coated in iron-dry blood made guessing the perpetrators a fair bet.

The land was quiet, other than when it wasn’t.

When she would open up a door to find animals chewing on the remnants of the inhabitants, their fur a matte red and eyes a feral yellow.

When she would disturb a flock of angry birds who had begun to sour from all the meat within their bellies.

When she saw those very few who had managed to last longer than all the rest, those who had -  _ just like her _ \- seemed immune at first and unburdened by the ravage of pestilence only to finally -  _ unlike her _ \- succumb to it.

There really was nothing that she could do for them. Well, except perhaps to usher in a quick and painless end that would save them the suffering of watching their bodies begin to blacken and decay.

She set to that task with relish and a simple dagger nearly the length of her hand, happy to lend them some sympathy in these trying times.

No one had saved her parents from this anguish.

No one had saved her brothers from drowning in their own blood.

No one had saved the pretty girl who had lived beside her, beautiful face and beautiful eyes of crystal glass, hair a portrait of the moon.

No one had saved the baker who had snuck her food when it became clear that the necessary traders weren’t going to appear that year.

No one had saved the Priestess from the North, with her red hair and thick accent that spoke of adventures and sights unseen. 

No one had saved anyone, and no one could.

But she could offer mercy, a kindness. It was the best she could do in light of being trapped here.

_ ‘Elsewhere is too dangerous,’ _ her father had said.

_ ‘Elsewhere is too far away,’ _ her mother had admonished.

And so she had listened and followed and now she was in the centre. A perfect seat to stay and watch as the world around her crumbled into ruin.

It didn’t really matter -  _ but it did, how long had it been? _ \- when she first heard the telltale sound of someone attempting to hide. It came from far behind her and was present for but a moment, soft and quiet and nothing less than perfection in its desire to hide away.

She likely would have missed on any other day. Could have already, she accepted, aware that she may have been missing it for who knew how long before. 

But on this day old man Aberforth had died early in the morning, and now no one was around to scream and rant and holler into the encroaching void.

Now it was just Hermione, just Hermione and the animals and the birds who scrounged and scavenged in a quiet but peaceful solitude. A solitude that Hermione had built, had created within the confines of what once was a bathhouse and now was her little home.

A farm of sorts that she had cobbled together from the placement of stable gardens and cleanly flowing water that erupted from a well within the centre. 

It was peaceful here. Quiet now, without Aberforth. Nothing to disturb her now except the slow shuffle of animals and the sound of her own -  _ crying _ \- breathing. It could even be locked up tight, now that she had found the keys. A small miracle for sure but she had found them hard to come by and cherished this one all the more for it.

But no longer. Now it was tense, burning up her ears when the sound of movement behind her set in. Hermione pushed harder on the flight of stairs before her, felt as her footing was lost amid gut-slick steps. The rotunda that was high above her had been hit hard within the first few weeks as parishioners and migrants clogged its spaces with death and the hawkers attempted to spread false hope.

Hermione had spent time clearing it as best she could but these -  _ people, mothers, wives, sons, daughters and fathers -  _ corpses had leaked and dripped and coated the ground in slickness. This had been an act of -  _ selfish _ \- mercy, and once she had cleared as many as she could she set to saving the literature contained within its inner portions. She had earned this escapade and now her poor boots were losing their grip.

She fell backwards, rather predictably. 

She was caught and supported  _ \- to her own rather broken surprise _ \- by strong hands and a warm chest. Whoever had been shadowing her had stepped in, saved her in the last moments. Gently set her back onto her feet and waited while Hermione stood there in a silence that belied her desire to shore up whatever courage she had and turn-

“What? I don’t even get a simple  _ ‘Thank you?’ _ Well, perhaps I should have let you fall. How fitting an end that would have been, survive the Plague only to die by cracking your pretty skull.”

Hermione felt her cheeks turn beet red as she pushed away from the startling voice and soft body, turning and wondering just exactly  _ who _ this person thought she was.

Turned and stared openmouthed in embarrassed wonder.

The woman was taller than any Hermione had ever seen, and thus it was the first part of her appearance that she latched onto. Tall and dark and clad in a black cloak that seemed to be made from silk or another piece of finery that Hermione could not properly identify. Being poor and living near the bottom of the Capital’s society hadn’t done very much for her education where fanciful things were concerned.

But she could easily recognize class in the grace and poise with which the woman held herself, could tell that she was like the others that her mother had warned her away from -  _ the rich men with thick bellies who would look at her and lick their lips, the pompous madams that wanted her for the body she had and nothing more, the older gentlemen in their white robes, the surgeons and doctors who attended the aristocratic elite with knowledge gained by pulling apart people like her  _ \- and this woman positively radiated  _ danger. _

And perhaps a cheeky sort of malevolent humour, if her wide grin and manic eyes were anything to go by.

So she ran.

\---

There were  _ things  _ following her now. Birds to be precise. Large, enormous creatures that shook wherever they landed and left Hermione with a gift of their feathers. 

It might have been more a warning but Hermione simply found it oddly sweet. Breadcrumbs to something she didn’t understand.

The woman had yet to make a reappearance but Hermione swore she could still hear the telltale sound of her walking around, pulling back by just a couple of paces or ducking into abandoned hovels just before Hermione could manage to turn a corner. It was -  _ Hermione hoped, desperately and fervently _ \- just a gentle game.

She ran ever deeper into the Labyrinth of a dead city.

\---

Hermione awoke to flowers all around her. 

Roses, bundles of daisies, little orchids that seemed to be out of place with their delicate and fragile frames. 

All of them black, all of them growing near piles of lonely feathers. 

The Capital had well and truly stolen her away -  _ stupid mistake, horrid miscalculation, she’d abandoned her home in fright! _ \- to something new. What had begun as a flight from the tall woman had become a meandering dance throughout alleys and covered roads -  _ their heights hidden and blanketed by cloth that stretched taut above her by the lowly inhabitants as a way to hide from the sun _ \- and then turned into a dead sprint.

Now she was lost and there was no one else around her. All the livestock that had been roaming about unmolested were nowhere to be seen. Whatever had been their ultimate fate was lost on Hermione, whether they ate one another or left for better grazing she could not tell.

There was no one down here except the birds and these new flowers, always more and more. Every day began with sunlight breaking through the thinnest layer of grey clouds, faint and listless. The distant sound of crows and ravens waking to a new feast as their cries filtered through the strange geometry and spiralling morass of interlocking tenements.

She woke one morning with a rose upon her -  _ stolen-pilfered-cherished _ \- pillow. It was -  _ so far as she could tell _ \- the only true evidence that her pursuer held no desire to harm her, that she had not yet given up despite the continuation of their game. 

It was the only true evidence of life down here.

Food was becoming hard to find. 

What had truly forced her to abandon the relative luxury of her prior habitation? In that space she had food and water, a shelter that was truly unmatched. No one could have molested her quiet existence and she’d had nothing for neighbours except rotting corpses that she had already planned on rehoming.

Now all she had was the looming threat of death.

\---

One more week managed to pass Hermione by in relative safety -  _ body, if not mind _ \- before pain began to wedge itself within the confines of her gut.

What had started off as mere hunger pangs were blossoming fully now. Her ribs showed through beneath the dirtied expanses of her skin and the warm bronze had become matted with dirt and detritus.

What food had remained safely within the homes that she ransacked was swiftly turning to rot and ruin. Even the hardtack and barrels filled with grain were going  _ wrong. _

Maggots roosted within the loose flour, flies munched on paper-thin biscuits. What salted meat remained was withered and hard, not even fit for chewing into submission.

Hermione didn’t know where she was.

What familiar sights had existed -  _ a wandering skyline filled by the massive tower to the north, a conservatory or so she had been told a place filled with insights into the natural and mystical _ \- were now hidden by the spiralling heights of the apartment blocks and twisted staircases that only led  _ down. _ The Palace was long gone -  _ even the golden rays that had bounced and reflected from its rooftops were hidden away, farther and farther in the past with every twilight that fell down upon her and the sparkling beauty of its gilded tiles was a loss she felt too keenly _ \- and what directions she still came upon were maddening in their complexity.

A hand-drawn map she found upon a corpse said to go south to find a well.

Instead she found a staircase and a single black chrysanthemum on the topmost step. 

A sign scrawled out in blood upon a wooden board said to go left for safety in a local brewery -  _ beer wouldn’t have spoiled yet, no? It would last and she could find herself  _ **_something_ ** _ to help forget all this misery _ \- and Hermione followed it as far as she could.

There was a wall, a black feather, and another chrysanthemum.

There was a sound like feet on stone, a hurried approach and gravel kicked to the side.

Hermione turned and found nothing.

\---

Moments flew by her until days seemed to pass with the blink of an eye.

The footsteps had been following her still and instead of avoiding her they had taken on an edge of speed and intensity that Hermione could not match.  _ Wouldn’t _ match. Not now, not so broken as she was.

She fell.

She slept.

\---

Hermione awoke slowly and with great pain.

“Why have you been running?”

Eyes filled with crusted opened to an image that shifted, settled, cleared to reveal the truth.

The woman was back again, present and no longer eluding Hermione’s searching eyes.

Not that she had very much choice in the matter, not with the bulk of her sitting steadily atop Hermione’s midriff. Her legs were crossed and her arms folded over her chest like some angry little toddler that had been denied a treat. The woman looked just like Hermione remembered her.

Larger than life. Strong. Beautiful even as she peered down and framed Hermione with a halo of black curls that twisted as so many angry snakes. A squawk sounded off from behind her -  _ a sound so quiet and demure it was as if the creature was aware it was intruding and unwanted _ \- and then the woman pulled back, rolled off of Hermione and allowed her to  _ breathe. _

The pain lifted.

“Well alright then, if you’re not going to answer me then fine.” the woman groused, standing aside and squirming in place. She looked everywhere except at Hermione, ran long fingers over pale skin and fluffed the silken robe she wore. “Whenever you’re ready I have food in the other room. I’d like it if you’d join me.”

Hermione found herself at a loss for words and simply lay there for a moment as the woman walked away before finally swinging her -  _ incredibly light, far too light for safety _ \- body out of the bed she had been laid down on and following where the woman had gone.

Not that the room she was in was currently unworthy of her presence or attention -  _ it was just as absolutely decrepit and broken as she felt _ \- but the promise of food _ \- any food, even food offered by this mysterious raven in human form _ \- was just too much for her to ignore. So too did she discard the thought that she run. The chance to finally understand this stranger was upon her and Hermione resolved then and there to get all the information out of this meeting that she could.

After she ate, of course.

And presumably only so long as she wasn’t murdered.

Or kidnapped -  _ though Hermione was silent on that note, unable to conjure up a place she could be brought to within this cracked reality, the muted light outside the open window all strange and twisted by the buildings and walkways that made her head hurt the longer that she looked _ \- to another land.

Food first, worry later.

Or perhaps it would be best if she optioned worry first.

The spread laid out atop the ancient table was thin and  _ \- more than _ \- somewhat mealy. Two claw cups were full of a steaming liquid that Hermione decided as being tea -  _ of a variety and flavour that she had never once smelled before _ \- were set at opposite ends and two bench seats sat before them. On the farthest one - _ closest to the door _ \- the woman rested with a strange bird atop her shoulder, the other bench free and clear for Hermione to take.

She sat down -  _ warily, with her feet on the outside should she need to run _ \- and watched with still bleary eyes as the woman sipped at her cup and stared.

Her eyes were grey holes, twin wells of pitch that swallowed Hermione up and left her feeling cold. 

Hermione couldn’t suppress the shiver that wracked her form and felt pain behind her eyes again, felt herself floating and heavy and settling to the bottom of some massive lake.

“Eat up, have a drink.” the woman spoke to her, setting her own cup down and stretching at the raven by her side. “No one will disturb us here.”

_ That  _ made Hermione chuckle, dry and grating and slightly maddened.

“Who would even seek to interrupt us here? Isn’t everyone else  _ dead?” _

That statement earned Hermione an odd tilt of the woman’s head, apparently willing to concede the point but remaining obtuse and quiet.

Hermione wrapped her hands onto the cup, relished the feeling of  _ warmth, _ “They are, aren’t they?”

“No. Or maybe.” The woman twisted in her seat, squirming again as she turned to look out of an opened window with shutters pulled off and only a dim light entering from the outside. “We are.” she continued, “Alone, that is. Not dead. I’m sure of that much at least but as for being the  _ only _ ones who are left alive, I don’t know. I’ve not seen anyone else and I’ve not been here before. Have you?”

“Well of course I have,” Hermione countered, her mind slowly catching up and realizing the error in it. She hadn’t lived  _ here _ . “Or, I lived in the Capital. I’ve just never been this far down before. Didn’t know it  _ went _ this far down.”

“Me neither. So!” The woman grinned at her with pearly white teeth and a curving pair of lips that brought to mind a scene Hermione had witnessed once, of carnivores and blood. “So why’d you come out all this way?”

Hermione baulked at the question -  _ she had been running from this woman, why else would she ever come down here _ \- and watched instead as her mysterious saviour pulled at a brick of hardtack and a strip of dried jerky that looked to have been made sometime around the last century at the earliest. What exactly was she supposed to say to that?

Where even were they?

A grim form of determination choked its way through Hermione as she countered instead with, “Who are you?”

The other woman stopped her motions and turned to stare at Hermione while she waited with bated breath for an answer to her question.

One second passed them slowly.

Two.

Hermione sighed and sipped from the cup, savoured at the bitter swill of tea and thanked all the Gods that something here had remained somewhat unspoiled. She eyed the jerky with disdain and grabbed instead at the hardtack, peeling it apart and stuffing morsels -  _ that were absolutely not moving, not squirming little grains of white rice that wriggled in displeasure at the disturbance _ \- into her starving mouth.

Food.

_ Food! _

Food after so long a time of having nothing except air. Liquid after so long a time of sipping at puddles and scraping the bottom of barrels. A seat on which to rest herself now that she was no longer tortured by the unknown into sprinting ever deeper.

“Bellatrix.”

The voice startled Hermione from her place of mild contentment and set her to running before she realized that it was the woman who had answered her.

The woman who had somehow moved from her own spot to sit next to Hermione with a massive raven perched atop her shoulder, and apparently accomplishing that without Hermione ever even noticing her move. She stared and wondered -  _ at how this Bellatrix had moved with so much grace and silence that she might as well have simply popped into existence _ \- and swallowed what she could.

“I’m Hermione.”

\---

Down.

_ Down. _

**_Down._ **

The roads were all sloping forward -  _ almost imperceptible but it was there, she could feel it in the way she skittered across gravel, the way water sloped to just one side _ \- and covered by mountains of slate and granite, tunnels out of homes.

The torches along the sides of the alleys and spaces never seemed to run out though. Never sputtered away into nonexistence even though she could see them consuming oil and wood. Never disappeared, never dissipated the way a true fire should.

The damned things spooked Hermione almost as much as the sudden loss of the ravens -  _ all except for one, a large and imposing beast with a beak so sharp that it could have shattered glass _ \- one morning.

The flowers were still there but far away reduced in volume. 

That scared Hermione as well.

So too did Bellatrix, whenever the woman would lean up against her back with a heavy chin atop Hermione’s shoulder and breath against her neck. Of course there were lighter moments -  _ moments where she marvelled at the woman’s ability to draw beautiful patterns against walls in charcoal and ash, moments where Hermione wanted and needed to listen to Bellatrix’s voice more than she wanted to find a way back out _ \- but they were few and far between.

Few and stuck between moments where the world doubled, tripled, fell back on itself and sent a dagger of pain inside her head.

Moments where there was only motion.

**_Down._ **

_ Down. _

Down.

\---

“Hold up, we’ve been here before.”

The words halted every motion of Hermione’s body, foot just grazing the top of the staircase and now stationary as she paused and considered it.

Had they been here before?

“Are you sure?”

Why couldn’t she remember it?

A hand atop her shoulder pulled Hermione back, darkened voice growling in her ear, “Of course I am. This is the second time we’ve been somewhere we were before.”

_ But was it? _ Was Bellatrix  _ certain? _

“Oh stop looking at me like that. I’m sure as I’ve ever been, and when have I ever led you astray? Besides, I’m better at this, remember?” Bellatrix pulled Hermione into her by the grip atop her shoulder, spinning her around and wrapping the smaller woman in a too-tight hug.

Little moments like this were becoming much more common between the two of them. An action -  _ or even inaction _ \- would lead Hermione into her grasp while the stoic raven atop Bellatrix’s shoulder stared down at her with dark orbs that glittered in the reflected light of the infernal torches.

A cold shiver wormed its way up Hermione’s spine. Too intense, too full.

She hid within the folds of Bellatrix’s body and clothes, hiding from their reality -  _ and the cold wind that seemed to blow from nowhere _ \- in the safety that the woman exuded.

But there was nothing for them to do except go onwards. Going back had been lost, and now only the thinnest breeze let them know one way from the other. But that just led them both further into the Labyrinth until they were lost amid its endless twists, lonesome and finding nothing -  _ alive or dead _ \- except the food and torches that seemed to have been frozen in place.

How long had they been on this journey? How many days had passed since first they met?

How in the world were boxes full of hardtack still edible, packets of compressed tea still viable?

_ How were they still alive? _

“We’ll need new clothes soon. Getting colder every day.” The woman holding her smiled down, sorrowful and cheery and some mixture of confusion that left Hermione’s stomach in a lurch. 

The statement was true enough, she thought, pulling at her rags and watching thread pull away from thread. They needed something better to wear if they were to continue on for much longer. Time seemed to have become lost down here with them but it appeared that some things were spared that oddity. The Capital preserved it all except their bodies, their clothes, their  _ minds- _

Things were wrong here. Hermione knew it, Bellatrix knew it. 

The raven perched atop Bellatrix’s shoulder knew it as well, laughed at them both with a squawk and seemed happy to let them know.

\---

“Well what about this then?” Bellatrix threw the bundle of cloth at Hermione’s head, the long fabric wrapping around her neck and nearly falling to the floor when she failed to catch hold of it. It was a light material, not sheer but not too thick. Warm.

Not silk. Not simple. Something different then?

Perhaps. 

The home that they had chosen to ransack was less a home and more a cave. It wrapped underneath two entrances made of clay and formed red bricks, a little thing that poked outwards from the centre and was covered overhead by wood that seemed too wet.  _ Was _ wet. Dripped something viscous, something  _ red. _

Hermione pointedly ignored the slow  _ drip-drip-drip, _ pretended she never noticed the colour. 

Ignoring these things was becoming -  _ blessedly, horridly _ \- easier.

“Put it on, I’m sure you’ll look lovely.”

\---

Perhaps they had always been meant to end up here. Some endless cycle of downward momentum that brought them nothing but things she could not understand.

It just kept on going down further, faster and never-ending, never enough.

Bellatrix must have noticed that pensive look upon her face. The way Hermione slowed down, tilted slightly as she fought for balance and correction over the sudden fear that grew within her heart. Or maybe she had been talking and Hermione had simply failed to answer.

“Chin up, come on. We’ll get to the bottom of this eventually, it can’t go on forever.” Bellatrix pulled at Hermione by the loose grip of a warm hand in hand, “Now, let’s go. You wanted to move, let’s move.”

She did?

_ When? _

\---

Air exploded from Hermione’s chest with a violent need, humid and warm and proving -  _ yet again, even though she had lost count of the moments where she thought she wasn’t _ \- she was alive.

That the action was helped along by a pair of too warm lips and a probing tongue was yet another in a strange line of events that forced her to exist within this moment. Her fingers knotted in Bellatrix’s hair, pulled her and scratched with a dire need to let her know just how she found this turn of events.

Good.

_ Great. _

So much better than waking in the cold to nothing and no one, better than falling asleep in a curled up ball of skin and bones that ached from head to toe.

_ “Fuck!” _

She felt the reverberations below her as Bellatrix began to chuckle, no doubt imagining all the pithy retorts she could give to that were her face not being put to better use.

Hermione didn’t mind it. Instead she simply rode Bellatrix all the harder for it, squeezed her thighs together and pinned her in place until a gasping, drenched woman needed to pull back and bite her as an excuse to grab some air. 

Could she truly ever hurt the woman?

Probably not.

Hurting her would have required a strength that Hermione didn’t have and at this particular moment -  _ all-consuming, all-encompassing, lasting and lasting and building and building _ \- she couldn’t focus anywhere near enough to muster it. Instead she said  _ ‘Fuck it,’ _ and pulled tiger to Bellatrix’s steaming body. Arched as much as she could off of the hay-filled mattress, screamed into the void until her throat was raw and aching. Lungs emptied, flush with red and rivulets of sweat -  _ the fever and desire, heat born anew between her legs and in her heart _ \- while the air around her became scented with copper.

Relaxed her body and moaned through - _genuine and interested and_ ** _pure_** \- when Bellatrix pulled herself back, licked her lips and crawled atop Hermione to leave her with the taste. The woman was tall and this bed was large, but Hermione was small and tense and she welcomed the blanketing weight of her Raven-turned-Lover.

Some nonexistent noble had once -  _ had never _ \- lived here and this space was set to provide them with their first respite in ages among the dreary continuance of the Labyrinth.

She savoured their kiss before Bellatrix pulled away and settled another pair of lips, Hermione starting to her task with reserved confidence. Her tongue rubbed out circles and shapes that she had seen the Capital twist itself into, teeth nipping lines into the uneven plainness of Bellatrix’s thighs. Tense hands with an iron grip slithered under legs, around hips, up to place sharp nails against a taut stomach hard with muscles and age.

Ran her nails down in repeating lines and shivered with desire when red trickled in her wake. Shivered up the length of her body when a budding warmth and words of feral desire exploded from Bellatrix’s mouth, an urging that led Hermione ever onwards to completion. She swirled her tongue, sucked upon a nub of hardened flesh -  _ so very hot that it might have even been burning _ \- and grazed it with her teeth in simple pressed that made it plain that she was aware of the pleasure and pain held within her grasp.

Time passed, Bellatrix came, slick and steaming and still Hermione remained restless in her movements.

That night there was no sound from the Labyrinth around them. Nothing was created there that they did not release.

\---

Hermione managed to still her heart before the reality of the yawning chasm that lay before her truly sunk in.

“We’re here Bella,” she said, listless and forlorn.

The Bottom.

The End.

The Centre.

Reality pulling apart like so many loose threads, a sight to finally behold after who knew how long a time spent travelling in circles that never ended.

Bellatrix was kind, wrapped arms around Hermione’s waist and settled her chin onto her shoulder with a grace that left warm breath ghosting across her cheek.

The older woman purred, “So that’s it then. Dare we continue?”

That was a good question, honest and true.

They hadn’t been doing very much of anything else as of late. There wasn’t much to do. The winding staircases and sloping gradients had led them ever deeper and now -  _ months? Years? Centuries?  _ **_How long had it been?_ ** \- they were finally at the end.

Hermione stole a moment and thought rationally, hoping for an easy answer.

None came.

“We could just stay here. We have food, we have shelter. It’s cold but not too cold and we have light that never goes out.” She turned and surveyed the land that coalesced upon this point, the hodgepodge assortment of architecture and stone that had continued to become less coherent -  _ and continued to bring her blinding headaches that swam and bashed against the interior of her mind _ \- the longer they went on.

The homes that now spliced themselves into duplicates were most alarming now. Hermione could poke her head through a door and see a graveyard instead, tombstones glaring back at her while further in a bed was laid and fresh. But this had been continuing and growing and she supposed that it was as it all should be.

Broken.

“Did we die?”

It was an honest -  _ if oft-repeated _ \- question.

“You might have, you might’ve not. There’s only one real way to tell.” Bellatrix wrapped herself further around Hermione, lips pressed into her skin and the faint beat of a pulse surging through them both. 

The space laid out before them was much more of a wall than an empty spot. The darkness churning within its depths held some sort of form or substance and Hermione swore that she could see the beginnings of something physical instead of ethereal. It was the only real difference amid its sameness. A patch of what she had assumed to only lead down further had been replaced with a massive substance made of nothingness.

“Shall we?” Bellatrix murmured in her ear, prompting Hermione into turning to look at that steel-laced gaze. “Unless you’d rather go back, that is.”

Did she?

Hermione stole one moment to ponder the whole of the question before placing a kiss -  _ gentle and warm _ \- against Bellatrix’s throat.

She smiled.

They had -  _ or  _ **_she_ ** _ had _ \- already been through a Hell that made no sense. 

Could anything be any stranger than this?

“Let’s go.”


End file.
